Dec

9

…with the oddest people. Donnie Deutsch may be a plastic-coifed Barbie’s Ken wannabe, but every once in a while he says or does something that makes me want to kiss him. He did one of those things this morning on Morning Joe (without Joe, who is, according to Mike, very very sick).

The tele’d in guest was RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who was there to take potshots on the misinterpretation of Harry Reid’s remarks comparing the passage of revolutionary health care reform to other legislative revolutions in history, most notoriously, to the passage of emancipation legislation. Like the other Republicans, he is in high dudgeon, acting as if Reid had just called them all sadistic slave owners – though Steele did put a finer point on it. Reid’s analogy, he said, is an insult to the millions of African Americans who are descended from slaves because it compares their situation to the situation of people who don’t have health insurance. It almost makes sense viewed that way – almost – if it didn’t completely miss the point of the analogy: that medical care is a basic human right, and that legislation that recognizes that fact is as revolutionary and game-changing as legislation that outlawed the ownership of another human being.

So what did Deutsch do that made me want to kiss him? He brought the analogy back home after Steele deliberately distorted it, and said it that plainly. “When you bring it back to the basic intent of the analogy,” he said, And he laid out the analogy as it was intended, to portray the Republicans as akin to the naysayers who have tried to block every major revolution in American government by saying “It’s not time yet”.

And Steele’s response?

“I won’t even dignify that with an answer.”

Yeah. Good call when you don’t have any dignity with which to dignify a blatant mischaracterization. That’s the answer that every bluffer knows – it’s a cheesy way to avoid answering a question when you don’t have a good answer. Deutsch’s question called Steele out, and Steele’s best shot was to stand on dignity that he doesn’t have and refuse to answer. And Deutsch noted that as well.

So go Donnie. You’re the golden Ken doll today. Keep this up and I just may have to start looking beyond your hot exterior and start thinking you might have a brain.